A Website Dedicated to Northrop Frye

Capture of York

On this date, American troops captured York (now Toronto) during the War of 1812.

From “Canadian Culture Today”:

The United States had a War of Independence against a European power in the eighteenth century, and a civil war on its own soil a century later. Canada had a civil war of European powers on its own soil in the eighteenth century, and a movement of independence against its American partner in the nineteenth. This started with the invasion of 1775 and continued in the War of 1812, which had very little point as a war with Britain, but was in many respects a war of independence for Canada. I discover that Americans, while they know about the bombardment of Washington and the battle of New Orleans, are often hardly aware, that this war involved Canada at all, much less that the bombardment of Washington was a reprisal for the burning of what is now Toronto. (CW 10, 515-16)